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Sustainable investing is hitting its stride, not only in net inflows, which Morningstar pegs this year at $26 billion through August, but in performance, in which U.S. sustainable equity and bond funds both outperformed peers through June, according to Morgan Stanley's Institute for Sustainable Investing 2020 report.
This builds on 2019, in which U.S.-based sustainable equity funds outperformed their traditional peers by a median 2.8%, while U.S.-based sustainable taxable bond funds outperformed their peers by a median of 0.8%.
In 2020, U.S. equity traditional funds overall through June are down 8.7%, while sustainable counterparts were down only 4.8%. U.S. taxable bond funds overall were up 0.9% over the same period, while sustainable bond funds were up 3.2%.
Morgan Stanley concluded that the last 18 months have brought "both tremendous expansion and unprecedented challenges in the capital markets," however "sustainable investments have continued to perform well in both environments … further dispelling the myth that investors seeking to 'do well by doing good' face a financial trade-off," states the report.
The bank studied more than 11,000 U.S. mutual funds and ETFs, noting "evidence that funds incorporating environmental, social and governance criteria can potentially provide financial returns in-line, if not better than traditional funds, and with less downside risk," it stated.
